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CHAPTER NINE;

LOVE IS WEAKNESS

"Bite off my arm, Fido."

"Sage, I'm not biting off your arm."

Sage glared at Scott. "You know, being your friend is optional? Which means if you don't bite off my arm right now, I'm not going to be your booty call when you need somebody to hide a dead body for you. So, either bite off my arm or I'm going to tell Coach Finstock that you're the one who stole the condoms from his drawer last year."

"How do you even know about that?" Scott said, exasperated as he moved to tie up his shoe laces.

Stiles winced from beside Sage, while she just grinned. "Your best friend told me."

"Dude!" Scott cried, hitting Stiles on the shoulder. "Who's side are you on?"

"Whichever side gets me out of this mile," Stiles grumbled, moving to help Sage put on her jacket. Her zipper was stuck, and she was forced to wear an atrocious maroon colored tank top that screamed school pride, of which she had none. Therefore, she was covering the color up with a black jacket. "I don't even see why this is mandatory."

"Oh," Sage began, giving a sickening sweet smile at her boyfriend. "It wasn't mandatory for me up until your ass decided that we should bond over dying of a heat stroke and being murdered by someone committing human sacrifices. So thanks, babe, really. You deserve a medal for practically handing me my own suicide."

"Hey!" Stiles complained. "You weren't complaining when I signed you up!"

Sage gaped at him. "Seriously? Did 'Stiles, if you sign me up for cross country, I will kill you' not classify as complaining? Oh, my god. I'm going to kill both of you. You're both dead to me." She moved away from the two boys, shaking her head as she pushed her way to the front.

It's been three days since the night at the school when Boyd and Cora went rabid, three days since the full moon, and Sage wasn't exactly sure what she could say about what's happened in those long seventy-two hours. After she had her hour long break down in Stiles' arms, she asked him if he would stay the night with her — it was actually morning, but he didn't say anything about her choice of time. While they were laying down, they had talked about what happened to them. She explained who Cora was, what happened with Billy and Clara, and how Argent had given her a gun to shoot Boyd with.

Overall, that had been the icebreaker in the hesitant conversation. Stiles kept talking about how he wanted to see her with a gun and how sexy she would be, to which she cracked a smile for the first time since she'd cried. After that, the days were spent trying to rekindle relationships with Cora. There was more crying involving the two girls, and lots of hugging. Now, it was a full house in their loft. Sage was taking a temporary residency at Stiles' house until Derek figured out where everyone was going to stay.

"Hey, Connelly! You look hot in those pants!" A senior shouted from the group of douchehats on the lacrosse team. Sage rolled her eyes, sending a middle finger towards the boy without even glancing his way. She was too busy trying to pull herself together so that she could actually run this thing. The whole reason she wanted Scott to bite off her arm is because Isaac already said he wasn't going to, and she knew that if she had a bloody injury, Coach would be forced to let her sit out.

Although, she would probably be rushed to the hospital instead of taking a seat on a rock.

She pulled her hands up above her head, stretching as she readied herself. She felt eyes on her, and thought that it was just Stiles or the perverted senior, but when she glanced back she noticed that it was a different pair of eyes. Two pairs, actually. Aiden and Ethan were both staring at her, irises narrowing as if they were inspecting something . Great, she thought, thing one and thing two just had to be on the team.

They began to move closer, and she thought that they were going to greet her but they didn't. Instead, they completely brushed the blonde off as they moved past her. Aiden's arm rubbed up against her side, and she watched as the twins advanced towards the front to stand on either side of Isaac.

Then, Coach had blew hard into his whistle and everyone took off.

Sage's eyebrows narrowed and she grabbed a hold of Isaac's shoulder before he could go. Scott appeared right beside her, and the two of them stared questioningly at the beta wolf. "Isaac?"

"It's them," Isaac confirmed before shoving Sage's hand off so that he could run after the two boys.

Sage's eyes went wide and she shared a look with Scott before taking off after the beta, all while Scott could only manage a single, "Wait!"

Isaac had taken a short-cut, literally just running past a large portion of the whole team while Scott and Sage chased after him. No part of her small body had been made equipped to run like a werewolf, and she realized that just a few seconds after following the boy. The sole idea of even thinking she could catch up was seemingly insane.

She stopped after she felt her breath get caught in her throat. Hands on her knees, she bent her head to her knees as she tried to get air into her lungs. Scott glanced back at her, and she shook her head. "Go! I'll catch up. Just make sure they don't kill him."

Scott frowned at her before turning around and going faster than he had before. She huffed out, squeezing her eyes shut as she moved to stand up. The rest of the team was just a few seconds behind her, maybe thirty, and that was only because they actually took the long route instead of the short way that she, Scott, and Isaac took.

Standing up straight, Sage went to make another turn on the trail when she saw something through the trees. Squinting her eyes, she walked closer to the object to try and see what it was. She truly wished she hadn't, because as soon as she saw the body, an instinctive scream fell from her lips as she backed away from the body. A boy, no older than eighteen, was strapped down to the tree by the thin wire around his neck.

She struggled to move away from the body, never having seen someone strangled in such way before. She had seen things, sure, but never had she seen a human do this to another human. That might have been the reason she was so affected by it; simply thinking of someone murdering a teenager out of pure pleasure caused bile to form in her chest as she whipped her head around, falling on the ground next to the nearest tree.

Someone had grabbed her hair a second later, keeping it out of her face while more and more gasps and cries rang through the air. She couldn't see anything, only the ground in front of her as she continued to throw up. When her eyes finally opened, she realized that it wasn't her breakfast, but blood. The leaves on the ground were literally covered in blood, everything having escaped from her mouth.

Sage spit the last of the iron taste on the grass before looking over to find out who had grabbed a hold of her hair. She shouldn't have been surprised to see it was Stiles, and he caught sight of the crimson falling onto her lip. His eyebrows furred in worry as he moved her closer to him, wiping off the blood with his jacket.

"What happened?"

She glanced back towards the body, clenching her jaw tightly. "I — I don't know. I was just walking and I found him."

She glanced up to see that four werewolves came skidding down the hill, all of their eyes falling on the body of the boy before they moved to her. She wasn't surprised, she was sure they could smell the blood on her. The same thing happened when she was in the classroom on the first day of school when her nose began to bleed. Something was happening, and her body was disagreeing with it.

She met a pair of concerned, brown eyes in the midst of the chaos. Aiden and Ethan were standing off to the side of the crime scene, and she realized that both of their faces were contorted into confusion at what was before them. That was when she knew they had no part in any of the sacrifices. Aiden frowned at her, his eyes calculating as he seemed to ask a silent question to her.

He tried to keep his attention on Sage alone, not the fact that she was wrapped up in Stiles' arms as she trembled. All four werewolves stopped their pre-fight as soon as they heard the scream of the blonde, mostly because in some way, all four cared about her more than their testosterone-filled, werewolf brawl. Aiden would refuse to admit that, though — that any part of him cared about her.

Until she nodded once at him, letting him know that she was going to be okay.

Stiles glanced over at Scott, tightening his grip on Sage's waist. "That's him, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Scott agreed, his voice contorting in pain. "That's him."

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The four teenagers — Scott, Isaac, Stiles, and Sage — were all standing around as they waited for Stiles' dad to arrive. Coach called five minutes ago, and it wouldn't take them long to get here. Not when they hear about how this guy died. Someone, if not Sheriff Stilinski, was going to eventually pick up on the pattern. Whoever was killing these people never did it a different way, and it won't take a genius to put the pieces together. Hell, Stiles did it in a matter of minutes.

"Hey! Get out of the way! Get back!" Sheriff shouted, before turning to look over at one of his deputies. "Get this area cornered off before they trample every piece of evidence."

The woman then proceeded to shout, "Back up! Everyone back up!"

"Get these kids out of here!"

Stiles rushed forward after moving Sage closer to Scott. He needed to talk to his dad, to let him know about how this kid died. "Dad, just come here. Look, look. It's the same as the others, you see?"

"Yeah, I see it. Do me a favor? Take Sage back to school," his dad pleaded, nodding over towards the blonde that was still trying to process finding a dead body. Sheriff turned towards Coach Finstock. "Coach, give us a hand here."

"You heard the man! Nothing to see here! It's probably just some homeless kid!" Coach shouted, trying to assure the teenagers around him in the only way he knew was possible. His words weren't the least bit reassuring though, and actually only made people more distressed.

Scott winced, moving towards Coach. "Coach, he was a senior."

"He wasn't on the team, was he?" Coach asked, letting out a large sigh as, once again, lacrosse became more important than the fact that a boy just died. Sage turned to look at the man, surprise written all over her face as she questioned whether or not someone could be so insensitive.

Just as Sage went to snap at Coach, a shrill scream rang through the air and was enough to bring a shiver to everyone's body. Heads snapped over to see that a blonde girl was crying out for Kyle, desperately trying to get to him while the deputy held her back. Sage thought she was going to throw up again, just by the very thought of losing Stiles the way that this girl just lost her boyfriend. She could never imagine being put in a position like that; believing that the person you love is okay up until the very moment you see them dead right in front of you.

She had been rooted in her spot, her body refusing to move as she watched the distressed blonde. Only when a pair of arms took hold of her waist did she realize she had been staring too long, and actually moved to follow after Scott and Isaac, who had been waiting for Stiles to grab Sage.

Isaac glanced back towards the twins, a small growl coming from his throat. "Did you see the way that the twins looked at him?"

"What?" Stiles asked, looking over too. "Like they had no idea what happened?"

"No, they knew."

Sage looked at Isaac like he was crazy. "Isaac, he was strangled with a garrote."

"Exactly," Stiles agreed, nodding towards his girlfriend. "Am I the only one noticing the lack of werewolfitude in these murders?"

Isaac looked at the couple. "You think it's a coincidence that they show up and then people start dying?"

"Well, no," Stiles denied, shaking his head. Despite the fact that he may have bad blood with the twins considering they shoved his girlfriend into a supply closet, he wasn't going to immediately write them off as murderers. "I still don't think it's them."

"Scott?" Isaac asked, his eyebrows raised as he waited for Scott's input. "What about you?"

Stiles and Sage were on the other side, anticipating his reply as well. "Uh, I don't know yet."

"You don't know yet?" Sage repeated, her voice raising as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Well, he's got a point," Scott tried to reason, nodding towards Isaac. "Seriously, guys. Human sacrifices?"

Stiles gaped at Scott like he had just admitted to being pregnant. "Scott, your eyes turn into yellow glow sticks, okay? Hair literally grows from your cheeks and then will immediately disappear, and if I were to stab you right now, it would just magically heal—"

"Please don't," Sage begged.

Stiles shushed her by putting his hand over her mouth. "But you're trying to tell me that you're having trouble grasping human sacrifices?"

"That's a good point, too," Scott said, huffing out as he looked over at Isaac. It was a literal debate, and quite frankly, they had no time to go to Judge Judy and see who had a better chance at winning this because either way, someone was dead and murders were going to continue happening.

Isaac scowled. "I don't care, alright? They killed that kid and they killed the girl that saved me. So now, I'm going to kill them too."

Sage watched as Isaac left abruptly, set out on a death mission to kill her ex-boyfriend and his twin brother. Never will there be a normal day in Beacon Hills.

Never.

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Hands met with cold water, and Sage's face was dripping as she stared at herself in the mirror of the school. After the cross country meet, they were forced to go back to school and act like they hadn't just stumbled upon a body of a boy who just lost his whole life. Other people might be handling it well, but she most definitely wasn't.

In the years of her parents dying and losing herself, she has come across many bodies and most of them had no reason to die. Most of them were kids that had bright futures, and most of them deserved nothing that was inflicted upon them. She has seen werewolves murdered, she has seen humans murdered, and nothing would ever get easier. It's something that continues to haunt her every single day of her life: how many bodies she had seen hit the ground in her seventeen years of life.

They are images. Flashbacks. All of which haunt her in her sleep, along with the stringing relapsed memory of the Hale house catching flame when she had been coming home from school in fifth grade. Some people could handle it, Derek could handle it, but she's never been tolerant to death. It has become the plague of the century, it always has been, and yet she will never be immune to it.

Sage supposed that's the only reason she's still human.

"Hey," a voice broke her from her trance and she turned around to see that it was the girl from earlier, the one that had seen her boyfriend's dead body right in front of her. Stiles said her name was Ashley. "You're the one that found Kyle, aren't you?"

Sage stared at the girl, swallowing hard. "How'd you know?"

"You look like you've seen a ghost," she answered, nodding her head. Sage watched her, and her back straightened out when she noticed that the other blonde's lip began to tremble. "He said he wanted to get married before he left. That he wanted to start a family so that he had more to come back to."

"He wanted to be in the army?" Sage inferred.

She didn't really have much knowledge about the people in ROTC, but it was easy to assume that is what the girl was speaking about. Enlisting in the army or dying is the only way anyone gets out of this town. The only person that's ever been lucky was Jackson, and even a part of him seemed to die before he could truly leave.

Ashley nodded, tears starting to spill from her eyes. "His dad was in the army, and his grandfather. He didn't want to be, but it was a family tradition. He just wanted to go to college and major in law. It's all he talked about — helping people get the justice they deserved."

"I'm so sorry, Ashley," Sage muttered. She knew that no amount of apologies would ever take away the pain, she knew that 'I'm sorry,' only means so much when the person you love is rotting in a coffin six-feet under.

"It's not fair."

The condolences seemed to be the breaking point for the young girl because she had started to sob furiously, hands shaking as she tried to figure out what to do with them. Sage's eyes widened and she quickly discarded the running water so that she could wrap her arms around the broken blonde.

Irony.

That's what it was.

How ironic that Sage had been in the very same position just three days ago, feeling as though there was no hope left in the world because people are always dying. People will always die, and it will never be fair to those left to stand at their funerals. It will never be fair to Kyle's parents to hear about the fact that his son will never grow up and get married to Ashley, that Emily is never going to get her driver's license or have a little girl, that Heather died without knowing what it felt like to be truly and madly in love with someone so much it hurts.

How ironic that those who die are the ones that least deserve it; that the ones who bury the dead are those who feel the pain so much more deeply that the ones in the coffins. Sage didn't understand it, she would never understand how cruel people can be to completely obliterate a life and destroy what that person has done for the world.

Sage allowed the girl to cry into her arms, a lump forming in her own throat as she spoke, "Life is never going to be fair. We just have to take it one step at a time and pray we don't fall."

Before Ashley could respond, or before Sage could give any more advice on how to keep breathing, there was a sound outside of the bathroom that made the girls pull away from each other. Sage's brows furred in confusion, wondering if two idiots were getting into a fight in the middle of the hallway.

Sage glanced over at Ashley, wondering if the girl was going to be following her out. The teenager shook her head, fingers falling under her lids to try and get the black makeup off. "I'll be fine. I've got to clean myself up before I go talk to the Sheriff. Thank you, Sage. People were wrong about you."

"What do you mean?" Sage asked, confused as stared at the senior.

"Just that you didn't lose yourself when your family died. I think it made you more human. That's a good thing, though. I promise," Ashley admitted, giving the other blonde a sad smile as she moved to walk over the sink that Sage had previously been occupying.

Sage stood there, dumbfounded at Ashley's words. She assumed that people in this school thought she was a bit crazy, maybe a little more than psychotic, but she never imagined them to call her broken. Hell, did everyone see her as a weak person? That she completely lost herself when her family burned to death? She didn't think she lost herself, she just stopped caring about something that she couldn't change. She couldn't change that Kate Argent hated werewolves, or that she was only ten when it happened.

She shook her head, letting out a deep exhale before nodding towards Ashley in goodbye. Sage pushed out of the bathroom door, her heeled shoes pounding on the school's floor as she stared down at her feet, trying to collect her thoughts. She needed to get herself together so that she could attempt to listen to Harris moan on about how much he hated the school and his students.

Just as she was beginning to turn around the corner, a body rammed into her and proceeded to push her back so that she wasn't going into the other hall. "What the hell are you do— are you serious right now? Do you just live to make my life a living hell?"

"Oh, sweetheart, that's the only thing I've got going for me," Aiden hissed through his teeth, still continuing to drag her away from her original destination back to Harris' class. "Now, shut your mouth and move your little body."

Sage rolled her eyes, shoving Aiden's chest so that he would let go of her arm. "Oh, sweetheart, I've got a gun. So I suggest you tell me what the hell is going on before I aim it right at your pretty face. Where the hell are you taking me?"

"Somewhere very, very far away from here."

Sage halted in her spot, which caused Aiden to stop just a few seconds later. He whipped his head around, eyebrows raised like he was tempting her to resist his escape plan. "I'm not going anywhere with you. You do realize that my friends think you're responsible for killing that kid today right?"

Aiden clenched his jaw, moving closer to Sage so that they were centimeters apart. "And what do you think?"

"I think you were capable of killing him," Sage admitted, crossing her arms over her chest so that there was a small barrier between them. "But I don't think you or your little pack of Alphas did it. I also think that's why you're trying to get me to leave, but I'm not going to run away from my problems. I'm not the same girl I was two years ago, Aiden."

"That's apparent," Aiden snapped, glaring down at her. "Whatever. If you want to stick around and get yourself killed, that's fine by me. See if I care whether or not you're dead."

Sage's lips began to twitch in amusement. "You do care, though, don't you? And that's the problem. Deucalion doesn't want you caring about your 'person of interest', but you do. Come on, Aiden, admit that you ca—"

Before Sage could finish her sentence, Aiden had shoved her into the lockers to their right. Eyes glowing red, claws extracted from his fingers, the Alpha was ready to rip out the blonde's throat right at that very moment. She knew it, too, but she still continued to let out a small laugh as she stared at the boy. One of her hands grabbed a hold of his wrists, but she didn't attempt to pry him off of her.

She just smirked at him. "Go ahead. Kill me."

The werewolf let out a low growl, his grip tightening on her throat before he shoved off of her. Sage held her throat, rubbing at the raw skin while she narrowed her eyes on him. His chest was heaving, but he wasn't in transition anymore. Sage huffed out one last laugh before shaking her head at the Alpha.

"So what are you going to do when he tells you to kill me?"

Aiden turned his back to her and didn't answer. She had given him the one answer that he refused to admit to himself. She knew that Deucalion was going to eventually grow tired of her being in the way, and it was only a matter of time before Aiden was told to kill her. She proved a point to him though, and now she knew that the only way they were going to win the growing war against the Alphas is by using Aiden.

Because, in the end, love makes even the strongest weak.

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what do u think.

im sorRY. i really loved this chapter though because we get to see saiden and saiden is bae. which, by the way, aiden was making his escape after punching ethan to death in the hallway. he just heard sage and kind of grabbed her. do you guys ship saiden. i do. i know i shouldn't because stage but i do and im going to writer's hell for it.

also, i wrote one of my favorite lines in this chapter. im extremely proud of it. it's when sage was talking to ashley and said, "Life is never going to be fair. We just have to take it one step at a time and pray we don't fall." like im just so proud of myself. but anyways, let me know if you liked this chapter. or this whole story. im kind of taking a new route with sage this season, letting her fly away a bit from stiles considering they're still on the outs despite the fact that they (somewhat) made up in this chapter.

if u read this, comment who your otp in this story is, from the first book to this one. it can be stage, or jage, or saiden, or siaac, or whatever your hearts desire.